564
PARTISAN REVIEW
handed a very large packet of revolutionary books and pamphlets, all ex–
tremely well bound. We wondered where they could have been produced.
Hardly possible among the ruins. Prague, East Berlin, Havana?
The theme of the seminar was "Sociopolitical Warfare," and it de–
volved largely around "Economic aggression, U. S.
A."
Nelson Mandala was there. He was bearing his bundle of books, per–
haps a dozen,
all
in
Spanish, and he hugged them to his chest. We had already
been told - by him - that he "claimed no knowledge ofSpanish." He seemed
to be unknown to this conclave and found himself a random seat, and there
he fondled his new collection. When he gave up this activity, he sat impas–
sively. For an hour or so the torrent of exhortation and debate raged around
his head. He sat as if in a trance, not turning his head to look at the various
speakers who addressed the gathering from different parts of the room.
Did he wonder what everyone was saying in such impassioned voice,
or was it enough for him that the lightning in the air found an echo
in
his own
ardor?
Or was it only natural for him to sit like a rock?
Black Nica coffee was served in an interval of the rhetorical downpour
buffeting the thatched-roof outbuilding. Nelson Mandala did not seem ill at
ease as he wandered from one periphery to another, his impregnable books
borne along like a treasure cache. He tried to strike up a conversation with
some Mexican "internationalists," delegates-at-Iarge to the Nicaraguan Rev–
olution. Suddenly he was actually talking with a man who proved to be a
faculty member of a university in New England. The professor was per–
fectly bilingual.
It
was we who were nonplussed when it was announced in Spanish
that an Indian chiefwould next address the congregation - in English. Man–
dala was introduced by a Mexican professor on the faculty of another uni–
versity in the imperialist
U.
S.
A.
ChiefMandala grew red-faced as he began exhorting the largely mes–
tizo and Spanish-speaking conclave. He asked for their support in the Fight
Against Racism, and in the struggle to break out of the reactionary
Reservation System.
We noticed some previously intense Indians now dozing while the tide
of words in an alien tongue swept over them. At the end the speaker was
vigorously applauded, even by the two or three people who might have
understood
him.
The next day Mandala went to Bluefields.
While our new friend Nelson was gone, out of sight, we lived and loved
and visited Nicaragua. There were two poles of dialogue; discontent and
fervor. Workday people recited a litany of frustration. People in uniform,
various uniform (no country we had ever seen had so many), called every–
one
compaiiero
and could recite, at will, a litany of marvels. The complainers
